The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
History
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I
Authors -- Biography; Literature -- Collections
Then tossed he the pike, played with the two-handed sword, with the
back sword, with the Spanish tuck, the dagger, poniard, armed,
unarmed, with a buckler, with a cloak, with a target. Then would he
hunt the hart, the roebuck, the bear, the fallow deer, the wild boar,
the hare, the pheasant, the partridge, and the bustard. He played at
the great ball, and made it bound in the air, both with fist and foot.
He wrestled, ran, jumped, not at three steps and a leap, nor a
hopping, nor yet at the German jump; "for," said Gymnast, "these jumps
are for the wars altogether unprofitable, and of no use": but at one
leap he would skip over a ditch, spring over a hedge, mount six paces
upon a wall, climb after this fashion up against a window, the height
of a lance.
He did swim in deep waters on his face, on his back, sidewise, with
all his body, with his feet only, with one hand in the air, wherein he
held a book, crossing thus the breadth of the river Seine without
wetting, and dragging along his cloak with his teeth, as did Julius
Cæsar; then with the help of one hand he entered forcibly into a boat,
from whence he cast himself again headlong into the water, sounded the
depths, hollowed the rocks, and plunged into the pits and gulfs. Then
turned he the boat about, governed it, led it swiftly or slowly with
the stream and against the stream, stopt it in its course, guided it
with one hand, and with the other laid hard about him with a huge
great oar, hoisted the sail, hied up along the mast by the shrouds,
ran upon the bulwarks, set the compass, tackled the bowlines, and
steered the helm. Coming out of the water, he ran furiously up
against a hill, and with the same alacrity and swiftness ran down
again. He climbed up trees like a cat, leaped from the one to the
other like a squirrel. He did pull down the great boughs and branches,
like another Milo: then with two sharp well-steeled daggers, and two
tried bodkins, would he run up by the wall to the very top of a house
like a rat; then suddenly come down from the top to the bottom, with
such an even disposal of members that by the fall he would catch no
harm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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